3-4ravdef509

He seems to be uncomfortable and trying too hard all at the same time. As as far as I know this is his first major injury he's had to recover from in his entire career. And lots of new and moving pieces, new offensive coordinator... he isn't playing well right now but it's mostly fixable stuff and honestly it mostly boils down to the fact that he seems to be playing scared and not with his normal confidence

I wanted to devote a discussion to weekly observations of Flacco as he continues to put time between him and his injury. If you want to reference a throw, this video should be helpful: http://www.baltimoreravens.com/videos/videos/NFLN-Every-Joe-Flacco-Throw-From-Week-1/aaef4892-3aa4-44c0-887c-03e108d8ad52 My observations? There were some classic Joe Flacco moments and throws. What wasn't there was a willingness to throw to tightly covered receivers. Joe's always been one to try and thread the needle, sometimes too often. In Sundays game he did a great job at identifying the open receiver and going through his reads. But when no one was open he didn't take many chances, opting often to throw it away or take the sack. There are pros to this. On one hand, he didn't really have any near interceptions except for the miscommunication between him and Steve Smith on one play. He was smart in how he took hits and protecting the ball. As usual, no turnovers usually leads to a win. On the other hand, what makes Joe special is making those tightly contested throws. Giving your receiver a chance to make a play. A lot could have gone into why he didn't take chances in this game though. For one, our defense was balling out, so it might have been a joint decision with the coaches that there wasn't a need to really push the ball offensively through the air. The ability of the Bills secondary also might have influenced it. Or perhaps Joe himself is responsible for not taking many chances, just wanting to avoid mistakes and still getting comfortable with playing with new players on a repaired knee, he isn't ready to make those kinds of throws yet. Hopefully, whatever the case, sometime by mid season Joe is ready to be more aggressive with the football, but taking a more conservative, ball protecting mentality with him into proper situations. Other than that, Joe was mostly accurate but there were quite a few shoestring catches from receivers, a result of Joe not stepping into some of his throws. Hard to say if this is just injury recovery jitters, or a trend of Joe that's been occurring more frequently in past years. Until there is more game film (more games played), it's hard to say. This is something I hope to see improvements on in week 2. Mobility isn't a shocker. He did move around a little bit, but on a repaired knee both consciously and subconsciously he's going to be more tentative about running around for at least a little while longer. There was enough good to give me some optimism about moving forward, but when we get to the Steelers after the bye hopefully some of these patterns have dissolved away. Certainly he's fought a long way back from his injury and it's encouraging to see him out there in purple again.

I can buy into the fact that Flacco isn't playing as well as he could be. I laugh at the idea that Joe is the even in the top 5 things this team should be concerned with. 1: Offensive Playcalling 2: Offensive Line Play 3: Shareece Wright 4: Fumbles 5: Dumb Penalties Maybe 6th or 7th on that list is tracking the progress of Joe in his first year playing after the recovery of a major injury. And also continuing to push Joe to improve on certain areas of his game. But Joe isn't the reason we lost that game. Without him we'd probably be sitting 0-4 right now. We've all seen worse games than this from our Ravens and from Flacco. 2011 we scored 1 touchdown against the Jags, we didn't get a first down for over two quarters I think. We ended up playing in the conference championship that year, and lost by a dropped pass and shanked field goal. 2012 and 2014 we were exposed and humiliated by the Texans. We ended up winning the Superbowl and giving the eventual Super Bowl championships a heck of a run for their money. We we didn't get blown out in this game. We almost won. We fell a little short. We hopefully will improve. It's a long season guys.

But he did .... he made a ton of plays while getting hit. In fact I can't remember a throw where he wasn't hit except for some of the really quick throws and even some of them he was getting it on because of how bad our line was. He just came up short on some throws at the end but still make two throws that were catchable and would have put us in range that were dropped. But we should have tried running the ball at least once in that sequence too

Everybody needs to calm down... Dod Joe play his best game? No. But our offensive line and our offensive coordinator are the real goats here. Joe didn't have enough time to make really any throws for most of the game. Joe finally started getting time when we finally got the running game going, which forced the defense to respect the possibility of a run play. Suddenly we were scoring. The last two drives though were compounded with mistakes from everyone, Flacco, his lineman and receivers and the play calling (4 straight throws in a row). Flacco is playing about as well as we could hope for given the line play and mostly absent running game, having come off the injury he had with not a lot of time in the off season to shake off rust. He didn't throw any interceptions and only fumbled one on of the many sacks he had. Honestly Osemele had he last laugh he wanted to have against his former team. Carr was protected all day and threw for 4 touchdowns even with not a stellar running game. Joe had to basically force every play and throw himself until West finally started getting into a groove. You cant win them all. We fell flat this time against a good team. It happens. I look forward to seeing this offense improve more as they have more time together and hopefully with the running game emerging we can see the play calling evolve. Still not in love with Trstman though.

If we can actually develop the run we might salvage this game

Gotta start opening it up on first down. We can't afford to put ourselves in 3rd and long situations, let's focus on getting positive yards on first down, like more than just one or two yards please.

Can't do much offensively when you can't protect your quarterback against a 4 man rush and you can't run the ball. Penalties are killing us too. The Raiders are clearly a better team, if we win somehow it'll either be because they screw it up or we start playing better somehow

Interceptions will happen. The first one was just a great defensive play. The second one was a bad throw or a badly run route combined with perriman getting schooled by an elite corner. The third almost int was Joe trying to hard to make a deep throw under extreme pressure. Joe was very aggressive yesterday. It paid off for the most part. Better to make mistakes now and have him and the team learn from them against these early opponents.

That works as far as the ability of the defender to read the quarterback's eyes, and the ability of the receiver and the ball placement of the quarterback goes. Joe has at times in his career shredded defenses by throwing back shoulder throws or high/low throws into zone coverage. But Joe has also had games where the defense embarrassed him. I believe the key is to find balance, and know when to be aggressive and when not to be. Sunday against the Bills Joe played well but not very aggressively compared to his play in the past. While there is good with that I would hate to see him give up on that facet of his play entirely. I will agree about zone vs man but just because it's zone doesn't mean you can't be aggressive at times with a good quarterback and on key receivers

Isn't every thread a Flacco thread?

So not complete bone headed throws? At least Joe seems to have been playing better lately. This season is like a trail through fire for him. If we get some weapons next year, this season might be the kind of learning experience that helps him elevate his play

Btw, i missed Joes ints. What happened on those?

No. That team was actually good and just sucked it up so bad that game. This team....no words.

Here's the thing though, they are bad enough that they can't win any games, but too good to not let a game go down to the wire before they lose it. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it.

Can anyone really vent? Was anyone expecting anything different?

I think people look at other quarterbacks and want Joe to be like them, instead of appreciating Joe for what he is. And what he is I would say is exactly like Fly said, his playing style is Favre-esqe and his demeanor is like Unitas. His leadership style is unique and goes under the radar. He's worth every bit of that $120 million contract he got, and anyone who demands that he needs to take a pay cut are fools. Without Flacco this team wouldn't have a single win this season, and wouldn't have even been a .500+ team the past two years, or won its second Super Bowl. Rays last ride would have ended in the second round without Joe.

my biggest gripe with Luck was the hype surrounding him coming out of college. But the dude is pretty good, everyone as an off game and off years.

Do you never go off topic in everyday conversation? It's not a big deal to have several posts veer off topic so long as posters bring it back, which they usually do. Just my two cents. Seems like every day I see half a dozen stay on topic posts after just a few posts that aren't exactly on topic. They were comparing several quarterbacks in the same conference as Joe, commenting and speculating on their abilities and projected status' and threats to Flacco and the ravens in the AFC post Brady/Manning era, where Joe, Ben and Rivers will be the more upper echelon established vets, with younger guys like Carr, Luck, Dalton and Tannenhill as the younger bucks biting at the bits. In fact, after Brady and Manning retire, depending on Flacco's success vs. Bens' success, Flacco could find himself being the quarterback to beat in the AFC in a few years considering the only other quarterback in the conference with a ring would be Ben (assuming none of the other young guys win one between now and then.) It's weird how well Joe played last week in comparison to prior weeks. He was just in the zone, which he really hasn't been in all year. Would love to see him step up and carry the offense in such an efficient way more often, though it's obvious we need to draft/slgn some more talent to surround him with. Even with the valid handicaps he's dealing with, for many games this season there has been too many back footed throws, too many terrible decisions, too many inaccurate passes. Honestly, he seemed to be pressing on every play. Last week he seemed to play more focused and played very smart football, taking what the defense gave him and taking chances/being aggressive at the appropriate times.

Really, this falls back onto the FO again for not giving Joe what he wanted in the 2011 offseason. Joe gambled and won. And Ozzie gambled and lost. A precursor of things to come

At least we're 6-1 and competing for the division

Can we just accept Joe is a good qb and that he can win us a Superbowl with the right team around him? He's not Tom Brady. He's not Aaron Rodgers. In fact, even both of those guys need a certain amount of help. It's a team effort after all. Ratedr somewhere back in the pile of spoke of good wrs helping good qbs which help the wrs...basically it's a symbiotic relationship to a point. Joe went off in the 2012 playoffs because of good offensive line play and being at the peak of his chemistry with the best receiving core he ever had. The defense was average. The running game was average. That's all we need folks. Average defense that can come up with some late stops, decent running game, and then focus on offensive line and receivers, mainly continuity in the receiving core but talent is important too. Now Joe made some God awful throws yesterday, mainly the 2nd int, but it's obvious it's because he's trying wayyyy too hard.

Me after reading this thread....

That second int was something terrible